Colorado
Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael L. Bender has adopted a new way to refer to
Colorado Supreme Court and Colorado Court of Appeals published opinions in
legal briefs and other documents. The
purpose is to support the use of Colorado case law in both book and electronic
formats, and to make it more affordable and accessible to attorneys and the public.
"Slip
opinions" were the opinions delivered by the Courts, but lacked a formal
citation format until published in the Pacific Reporter. Instead
of “slip opinions”, which do not receive a citation to the Pacific Reporter for
some time, the Court’s will immediately assign a “Public Domain Citation” (PDC)
when the opinions are released for publication.
This promotes quicker access for attorneys, researchers, and pro se
litigants to find, research, use, and cite to Colorado case law in both print
and electronic formats.
Chief
Justice Directive 12-01 is effective January 1, 2012, and requires that the Clerks
for both Courts assign a “Public Domain Citation” to all opinions announced for
publication.
See
the “Chief Judge Directives” underneath the Administration topic, and right above
the category “Adopted and Proposed Rule Changes”. Publishers of Colorado cases are being requested by the Court to include this public domain citation within the heading of each Colorado opinion that they publish on or after January 1, 2012.
Legal practitioners and
self-represented parties will be permitted—but not required—to
use the public domain citation
format instead of citing to the Pacific Reporter. Irrespective of
the
citation format used, a parallel citation to the other format is not
required.See the
Directive itself for how to create or use a PDC.
The
following is an example of how this will look online. To see the whole case click on 2012 CO 4
below.
ANNOUNCEMENTS COLORADO SUPREME COURT
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2012
OPINIONS
Supreme Court of the State of Colorado 101 West Colfax
Avenue, Suite 800 • Denver, Colorado 80202
ADVANCE
SHEET HEADNOTE
February
6, 2012 Click
on the case number to view the opinion in pdf format.
No.
11SA82, Colorado Mills, LLC v. SunOpta Grains and Foods Inc. – Regardless of
whether arbitration is involved or not, a district court has the same authority
to enforce subpoenas in civil actions. A district court, as a matter of state
sovereignty, has no authority to enforce civil subpoenas against out-of-state
nonparties. Instead, such enforcement, if any, is left to the states in which
the discovery is to take place.
Opinions
of the Colorado Supreme Court are available to the public and can be accessed
through the Courts homepage. Opinions
are also posted on the Colorado Bar Association homepage and free
websites.
Written by Catharine Cott, Reference Librarian
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